


as blood in moonlight is

by izzetboilerworks



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: AU, Implied Violence, dialogueless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 15:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17347574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzetboilerworks/pseuds/izzetboilerworks
Summary: Nolan hasn’t been looking good lately.





	as blood in moonlight is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onakissgodknows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onakissgodknows/gifts).



> title is from the vampire by conrad aiken
> 
> unbetad.

Nolan hasn’t been looking good lately. Carlos can’t put an exact timeframe on when it happened, but he was suddenly looking paler, and eating less, and spending long moments looking off into the distance with his dark eyes glazing over.

Carlos doesn’t like it, but the trainers think everything is fine. He’s getting stronger, they think. 

Carlos notices that Nolan eats a lot of steak, where when he cuts it open its red inside—not just pink—and he looks like a feral animal when he eats, hunched over his plate. His dark brown eyes look almost black, and wild, as his gaze darts around as though someone is going to snatch his raw steak from him. 

Nolan gets sick, during the day, his color drains more and he’s nearly falling asleep in the dugout, leaning against the railing, in cars on the way to the park – but the trainers don’t think he needs to be concerned. 

They play a night game—dark outside, just starting to get, on the east coast. Nolan seems flushed and ready to go, he seems faster in the outfield, and he crushes a homerun so hard it sails off over the back wall and out the stadium, and they lose track of it. 

“Holy shit!” DJ says and he whistles lowly. 

But in day games, Nolan’s sluggish and impatient at the plate. He gets moody, nearly hissing words, and if Carlos wasn’t so sure it couldn’t be true, he swears he’s seen fangs gleaming in his mouth. 

Carlos knows he was just imagining it because he studies Nolan’s mouth after the fact and his teeth are perfect, straight, and white and he shakes the image out of his head. Carlos is sure he’s seeing things when he thinks he sees the webbing like bat wings when Nolan stretches out. 

No one else is around to see it, so he can’t do a double take, or ask if his eyes are deceiving him. He tries to push it aside. 

And the look of a frightened housekeeper, who speaks in low Spanish outside the door about claw marks in the wood gouged in deep. 

Carlos remembers, memories of stories his mom used to tell him of how to be safe. 

But he doesn’t keep himself safe, not from Nolan. He puts himself in a dangerous stupid situation. 

So he’s surprised—but not _too_ surprised when he no longer can see himself in the mirror and there’s two perfect puncture marks on his neck.


End file.
